


Soldat

by nagapdragon



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Red Room, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6858385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagapdragon/pseuds/nagapdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We need to end this before anyone else gets hurt.”<br/>“I’m open to suggestions.”<br/>“Don’t make me say it, Stevie,” Bucky pleads. “You know what I’m asking of you.”<br/>Steve squeezes his eyes shut long enough for Bucky to shoot down two more people before he returns to the fight.<br/>“I can’t, Buck. There are lines I can’t cross.”<br/>“Please.”<br/>Steve takes a few of them down with acrobatics learned from Natasha, making everyone take a handful of steps back. He heaves in a deep breath, letting it out ever so slowly, and begins.<br/>“Longing.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldat

“Steve.”

“A little busy, Buck,” Steve manages before the next goon catches a lucky shot and drives the breath out of him. Another one falls a moment later with a bullet in him, the crack of the rifle far closer than Bucky should be to this fight. 

“There’s too many of them, Steve.”

“Yes, thank you, _I’d noticed that_ ,” he snips, clearing a path with a little more force than strictly necessary. “We’ll get through it. We always do.”

“Steve.” Something in Bucky’s voice makes him double back, ducking behind a heavy wall for some kind of momentary security. “Stevie, Clint broke an arm and Sam’s grounded. We need to end this before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“Don’t make me say it, Stevie,” Bucky pleads. “You know what I’m asking of you.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut long enough for Bucky to shoot down two more people before he returns to the fight. 

“I can’t, Buck. There are lines I can’t cross.”

“Please.”

Steve takes a few of them down with acrobatics learned from Natasha, making everyone take a handful of steps back. He heaves in a deep breath, letting it out ever so slowly, and begins. 

“Longing.”

 

***

 

_longing (n.): a strong desire for something or someone_

 

“Soldat, you will answer the question.”

“James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.”

He tests his restraints idly, never taking his eyes off the man in the not-so-crisp uniform, staring at fraying cuffs and the darned patch on one sock when his captor takes the chair across from him. The man folds his hands and leans forward, amused. 

“Soldat, obey.”

“My name,” he grits out, snapping his gaze up to meet cold eyes, “is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, serial number 32557038. Would you like me to repeat it again?”

“Is that so.” The man crosses the space between them, fingers tight as he leans down in a mockery of affection to whisper in his ear. “And what unit are you from, _Soldat_?”

He doesn’t respond.

He doesn’t know.

The man chuckles, loosening his grip to pet the side of his face. He jerks his head abruptly to the side, cracking it against the man’s cheekbone and earning a backhanded slap that makes him taste copper. He spits the blood on the barren concrete floor, not deigning to look at the man again. 

They can keep him here, but they can’t make him play their game.

“Take him,” the man sighs, turning away. “Take him, wipe him, and start again. Do better this time.”

He stares at the spiderweb cracks in the concrete wall while too many hands to fight drag him to the metal chair, replacing the handcuffs with sturdier bands across his forearms, his chest, his thighs. The wall doesn’t respond, doesn’t care, but it’s better than watching the same blank disinterest on their faces as they work. He’d almost prefer that they had some kind of interest in it. At least then it wouldn’t be just a job. 

_James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038._

_James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038._

_James Buchanan Barnes-_

When he screams, he screams for Steve.

Whoever that is.

 

***

 

_rusted (v.): to be affected with rust, to deteriorate through neglect or lack of use_

 

He comes out of cold storage with the ghost of his last scream in his lungs and a name he doesn’t remember on his lips. It might be the one he used to have, it might be someone he loved or someone he killed or the vaguest of impressions that he’s supposed to call for someone when he opens his eyes to the empty chair and age lining faces that just yesterday were solidly youthful. He used to be a person, he thinks, and people seem to have names. 

They carry him out of cold storage when his muscles don’t work right and something’s out of alignment in his arm, all gloved hands and biohazard masks like whatever kind of germs they have are the worst thing they could ever do to him. It’s hours of confusion, of letting one technician inject something that stings and burns into his bicep while another technician who tries to clean the blood off his metal hand where it stuck in the joints gets knocked across the room. At least, he thinks it’s hours. Someone whispers _it’s been six hours, the boss is getting restless_ when they think he can’t hear them. 

They could be lying. 

They do that sometimes so he won’t listen where he isn’t wanted. 

“Soldat,” the boss says, and with every passing day-week-year it sounds more like a title. “Assist in the interrogation of these two men. You may not kill them until instructed.”

They hand him a file. 

They hand him a gun. 

Twenty-two hours later- _it’s barely been out of cryo a day, we need more time than that to fix the sealing issue that keeps getting it frostbitten_ \- they put him in the chair. He lets them push him down, doesn’t bother moving as they latch him into the chair. It’s efficient now. He has hazy memories of how it used to be and slightly less hazy memories reminding him that the technicians that maintain him only ever retire in body bags. 

He still screams. 

Some of the youngest technicians, the ones he doesn’t vaguely recognize, are sobbing openly. He’ll have to kill them soon. 

“Freeze him,” they order, and the asset watches through slitted, wary eyes as they force him into the tank and slide all seventeen deadbolts. 

_3255-_

The asset slides into darkness before he can wonder what the numbers are.

 

***

 

_seventeen (number): one more than sixteen, or seven more than ten_

 

Bringing the asset into the Black Widow Program goes… poorly. 

The Black Widows are genetically engineered soldiers, designed based on the knockoff serum running through the asset’s veins. They send him to burn down the hospital where the twenty infants were born, destroying the corpses of the non-Red Room medical staff that had to be brought in, and the next day-year-awakening they put a line of six year olds in front of him without bothering to send him to the chair first. 

They tell him to teach them how to kill. The asset starts by taking the proffered gun and shoots one of the handlers.

“That is how you kill.”

They leave him out of cryo for nine months, sending him to the chair daily, and by the time they shove him into cryo and try to forget what they’ve created there are three little monsters left and blood splattered liberally across the sparring room floor. Five Soviet officials retch, three more demand that the trio be put down before their seventh birthday, and the one that suggests that the Red Room ought to permanently retire the Winter Soldier leaves in a body bag. Little Natalia, with her copper hair and steady hands, shot out his kneecap to bring him down to her level and the asset took the clean headshot to spare her that. 

He can kill indiscriminately. They torture him for his indiscretions afterwards, but the asset is sent to the chair before he returns to cryo and the damage is gone by the time they next have use of his skills.

The asset forgets. The Red Room forgets. Even the Soviet administration forgets.

Natalia Romanova does not forget.

 

***

 

_daybreak (n.): the time in the morning when daylight first appears; dawn_

 

Anya Nikolaeva takes a student visa to the United States at sixteen and weds a minor SHIELD official at nineteen. The asset becomes Aleksandr Nikolaeva, her elder brother who she visits in Europe every six months or so. 

Yelena Belova retires to wed her way into the Soviet high command because for all that the Red Room supports the Soviet state, that doesn’t mean they trust them. Her diplomatic immunity gets the asset in or out of a location more than once while the asset fulfills his mission. 

Natalia Romanova cuts her way through history, leaving a bloody stain in her wake that makes the Black Widow infamous. The asset plays her father, then her brother, then her companion while she becomes almost as famous as the Winter Soldier and he slips into myth. 

“Good morning, Soldat,” Colonel Vasily Karpov greets him. “I have a mission for you.”

“Ready to comply.”

“Anya Nikolaeva has heard whispers that Natalia Romanova is preparing to defect to SHIELD. You are to tail Romanova on her current mission and, if necessary, kill her.”

Romanova leaves with a scruffy blond SHIELD agent with a bow. 

The asset… misses the clean headshot, grazing her shoulder instead. 

The asset screams for days for the mistake.

 

***

 

_furnace (n.): an enclosed structure in which material can be heated to very high temperatures, e.g., for smelting metals_

 

The asset is told he works for Hydra now. 

The asset only cares about the next target, the next mission, the next pull of the trigger. Who chooses the target is of little importance. Alexander Pierce sends the asset after SHIELD agents who get too close to the truth, foreign leaders, and Anya Nikolaeva. 

This time, the asset does not miss. The STRIKE team escorting the asset ensures it. 

The asset goes willingly to the chair. The asset doesn’t want to remember.

 

***

 

_nine (number): equivalent to the product of three and three; one more than eight, or one less than ten_

 

The chair becomes… ineffective. 

The asset has always kept hazy memories, enough to remind the asset of the pain that results from disobedience, with moments of sharp clarity when he has been away from the chair for too long. He remembers more, no matter how many times they send him to the chair. 

He lets a witness escape in New York City when she runs into a dirty alleyway, hearing the echo of _I can do this all day_ in his ears.

He comes face-to-face with Natalia Romanova during a target extraction and puts his bullet through her side instead of her head.

He loses his handlers after seeing a blond man dressed all in red, white, and blue. The STRIKE team finds him wandering aimlessly along the streets, frightening trick-or-treaters and their parents. 

Brooklyn is put on the list of places the Winter Soldier can’t be sent, then all of New York City, then the entire state. Paris follows soon after. 

He assassinates superhumans before SHIELD can obtain them. He gets seen.

Alexander Pierce uses the asset less and less.

For the first time in decades, the asset screams for a Steve when they wipe him.

 

***

 

_benign (adj.): not harmful in effect: in particular, (of a tumor) not malignant_

 

The asset drags the Captain out of the water, falling to his knees in the muck to check his heartbeat. Blood seeps between his fingers from his own bullets in the Captain’s gut, slowing under the pressure of his metal hand as the serum that runs through his veins works to fix him. He’ll live. The asset has lived through similar wounds.

He leaves as the sirens scream closer, before the Captain wakes. He won’t let Hydra take him back to the chair, not when he knows that face. Not when the Captain knows him, knows him by a _name_. 

The Captain called him Bucky, called him James Buchanan Barnes. 

_32557038._

The numbers have to mean something. 

The next time a stranger asks for his name, he tells them James.

 

***

 

_homecoming (n.): an instance of returning home_

 

It takes two months of surveillance before he scales the outside of Avengers Tower and enters through the unlocked balcony door on Steve’s floor with a stolen iPod and a hope that Steve’s fridge is stocked. Climbing skyscrapers is tiring work. 

He’s found that through practice. Lots of practice. 

“You are not authorized to be here,” the ceiling tells him. Bucky looks up at it, shrugs, and continues looking through Steve’s kitchen cabinets. 

“Stevie won’t mind,” he tells the ceiling. “If the classifieds he keeps puttin’ in the paper are any indication, he might even be happy ‘bout it.” 

The ceiling doesn’t respond. Bucky frowns at Steve’s refrigerator. There’s a handful of things in there that his hazy memories claim Steve either never liked or outright detested. Some things could have changed- the Smithsonian claims that Steve is no longer allergic to anything anymore, for one thing- but it seems unusual. 

“The problem with your claim,” a woman’s voice rings out from behind him, “is that Steve Rogers lives one floor up.”

Bucky rotates in place, taking one last bite of the pickle purloined from the fridge before putting both his hands up. He’s armed, of course, and anyone in this building has to expect it. Natalia Romanova looks back at him, armed with a pistol likely not much else, given that she’s wearing only an oversized black and purple shirt. 

“Natalia,” he murmurs. She arches a brow. 

“I haven’t been called that in a long time.”

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“The last three times I saw you, Soldat, you shot me. It doesn’t inspire much confidence.”

Bucky winces. “Don’t call me that.”

“And what am I to call you, then?”

“Bucky. Call me Bucky.”

Natalia lowers her weapon, disassembling it with deft hands and laying the pieces neatly out on the table. She’s fast enough that it’s the only way to actually disarm her. 

“Clint, stand down,” she calls over her shoulder. A blond man steps out from the shadows of the hallway, shirtless save for the quiver slung over his shoulder. “Our guest seems to need a trip upstairs and JARVIS won’t allow it without a chaperone.”

“Quite right, Miss Romanoff.”

“Looks like what he needs is a solid meal and a few nights sleep with someone else keeping watch,” the archer comments. “And are either of you aware that it’s about three in the morning right now? Even Cap doesn’t get up this early. Hell, I bet Stark hasn’t stopped tinkering in his lab yet.”

“He’s been waiting for this long enough,” she whispers. Bucky barely catches it, even as good as his ears are. “They both have.”

Some nights he sleeps on Natalia and Clint’s couch, where someone will always stay up and keep watch so he can sleep. Other nights he wanders the city until daybreak, joining Steve for the last part of his morning run. It’s easier, the running and the occasional fighting when the Avengers need help, easier than holding uncomfortable conversations that eventually turn to _sorry for shooting you_. 

It isn’t easy, but it’s _Steve_ , and when has Steve Rogers made anything easy?

He doesn’t tell anyone that. He’s not sure it’s true.

He returns from a late-night meander one night to find Avengers Tower cordoned off, a smoking hole where the windows of the common area used to be. There was supposed to be a party there tonight- he tends to avoid the Tower whenever the Avengers are out and spent the evening in a dingy gym instead of at one of Stark’s fancy parties. Less trouble that way. Nobody’ll say it, but he eats Stark’s food at only slightly less of a rate than Steve does, so he can avoid crashing Stark’s parties. 

It doesn’t get better from there.

When the news cameras show the disaster in Sokovia unfolding in the sky, buildings tumbling from the edges of the floating city and people on the ground screaming for loved ones up above, Bucky packs up. He leaves a note for Natalia tucked underneath the pickle jar in her refrigerator with an explanation and a phone number that she doesn’t call.

He doesn’t leave Steve anything. He’s got nothing to offer. 

 

***

 

_one (number): the lowest cardinal number; half of two_

 

Wakanda is beautiful. Too warm for Bucky, and too hostile to him no matter that T’Challa told his people that Bucky was innocent of the crimes he’s accused of, but Steve always liked the warmth. Wakanda will be good to Steve. They’re certainly being good to Bucky and, where he’s going, he doesn’t exactly have to worry about the warmth. 

“You don’t have to do this, Buck,” Steve says, looking pale and drawn. Bucky smiles sadly at him. He doesn’t have to, but that’s the _point_. He _doesn’t_ have to. 

“I can’t trust my own mind, Stevie,” he murmurs, tapping his temple. “I can’t, and I don’t trust anyone but you while all that shit’s still up here. This is safest option for all of us.”

Steve doesn’t fight it, but he doesn’t endorse it either. When Bucky steps away, Steve starts to tear up, fists shaking with how hard he’s digging his nails into his palms. It’ll kill him to let Bucky do this, but Steve’s always been the one who could give and give and give and never demand anything in return. 

Bucky… he’s always been selfish.

At least, he thinks he has. Right now, it suits him just fine to be selfish.

He steps away, holding up a hand for the Wakandan doctors to pause, and slides into Steve’s space like he’s always belonged there. Maybe he always has. 

“I don’t know if this was a thing we did or not, Stevie, but I’m about to sleep for T’Challa-only-knows how long and I think I’ve learned a lesson about putting things off.” He fists his remaining hand in Steve’s shirt, dragging him in and pressing a quick kiss on his lips before he can protest. 

Steve doesn’t protest.

He grabs Bucky when he tries to step back, crushing them together and burying his face in Bucky’s hair. Bucky hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder, trying to fit them together closer and closer until they’re one being. 

“Don’t leave me,” Steve whispers, his voice breaking. “Not now. Not ever. I’ve lost you too many times to stand by and let it happen again.”

Bucky closes his eyes. It’s a bad idea, he knows it is, but he’s the king of bad ideas. 

“T’Challa?” he asks, not taking his head off Steve’s shoulder, “Thank you for your hospitality, but I don’t think I’ll be needing cryogenics. Do you happen to have a really good shrink around?”

“The best in Wakanda,” the king promises, and Bucky hopes that’ll be good enough. 

 

***

 

_freight car (n.): a railroad car for carrying freight_

 

“I cannot in good faith remove that trigger, Mr. Barnes,” the latest Wakandan therapist says, just like the last one and the one before that. “The Winter Soldier is a separate personality tied into your language centers and motor skills, particularly the ones that help you compensate for your metal arm. Removing the trigger sequence holds the potential to cause a permanent rift between the Winter Soldier and yourself.”

“I don’t _want_ the Winter Soldier,” Bucky snaps, fingers tightening reflexively on the arm of his chair. Steve says they’re working on a new arm for him- Bucky doesn’t know whether that means T’Challa has people on it or that Clint and Natalia are stealing the one Stark built for him before everything went poorly- but it’s best he only has the one for now. Had he the other one, too, he’d have destroyed rather a lot of chairs. 

“You don’t get a choice,” Furaha snaps back at him, taking a visible breath to calm down before she continues. “If I could remove the Winter Soldier at the cost of accessing skills you learned when that personality was dominant, which is what you asked of me, I would. As it is, removing the Winter Soldier would likely leave you lobotomized, Mr. Barnes, and in a way I doubt even you could heal from. I won’t do that.”

“Any doctor who would is probably Hydra,” Steve comments, perched in the windowsill sketching the Wakandan skyline.

“You can’t help me.”

“That is not what I said.” She leans forward onto her desk, fingers laced in front of her. “I cannot _remove_ the trigger for the Winter Soldier, but if you are willing we may be able to _alter_ it. It would be simplest to add a command on to the end, something no-one but you and I would know about.”

“And Steve,” Bucky adds before Steve can finish packing things up. “Steve should know it too. Just in case.” Steve stops moving, pencil hovering over the neat metal case he keeps his art supplies in, then sets it down ever so gently.

“It’s your mind, Buck.”

“And I trust you with it.”

 

***

 

_shield (n.): a broad piece of metal or another suitable material, held by straps or a handle attached on one side, used as a protection against blows or missiles._

 

Three months after Bucky starts threatening to defect back to Russia if Steve makes him go for another run in this god-awful season T’Challa claims is the Wakandan summer, he decides that all he wants is to go home. He has a new arm that stands up to T’Challa’s claws, Furaha thinks he can do with a good deal fewer appointments, and he’s officially sick of being sunburned. 

The problem is Steve, the goddamn stubborn idiot. 

So he asks T’Challa to keep Steve occupied with a good spar, leaves a note in their room, and hops onto a plane with the diplomatic envoy that just happens to be heading to New York City to meet with Stark.

“If you make trouble,” the diplomat warns as the plane touches down, “I will deny all knowledge of how you got into the country.”

“If I make that kind of trouble, I deserve it.”

The diplomat nods sharply, dismissing him before the customs people can descend. Bucky takes the opportunity for what it is- an escape. He’s not planning to make too much trouble. Just… letting himself into the Tower. He barely knows FRIDAY, not like he sort of knew JARVIS, but with a little luck it means FRIDAY won’t know that he really shouldn’t be there.

“Stark’s personal floor, whatever the hell number that is,” he demands, keying in the elevator code Natalia gave him to stop him from climbing the side of the building. He doubts Stark changed the code- it was mostly a formality in the first place, an outdated system for identification that was replaced by JARVIS.

“Mr. Stark’s floor is closed to all Avengers,” FRIDAY informs him, sounding bored. 

“Including himself?”

“All _other_ Avengers. Now, in or out of the elevator? If you ask me, it’s the nicest one in the building, but it’s still not that interesting.”

“Steve’s floor, then, and tell Stark I’m here.”

“The Captain’s floor.” FRIDAY goes quieter, her brash tones falling away as she suddenly pays more attention to who exactly used the Avengers keycode, but the elevator rises. “And how exactly may I inform Mr. Stark, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Tell him someone’s come to make amends.” The elevator slides to a halt, opening to the dusty expanse of Steve’s rooms. “He can bring the suit if he wants, but I’m not here to fight.”

“Of course.”

FRIDAY leaves him to his musings as he wanders Steve’s empty apartment, taking in the freshly-washed dishes on the countertop and the sketchbook open to a doodle of Natalia sparring with an unfinished stick figure.It isn’t quite like he just stepped away- Steve barely lived here in the Tower after the Sokovia disaster, according to Natalia- but at the same time that’s a sweatshirt of Bucky’s tossed over the back of the couch, left untouched for years. He runs his fingers over the worn fabric, back to the elevator.

“Vibranium arm. Nice upgrade.”

“Stark.”

“I really don’t know what I ought to arrest you for first- trespassing, vigilantism, or committing a lot of murders?”

“Start with the murders and work your way down. It might not be the easiest trial, but Natalia seems to think it’ll be the most dramatic one.” Bucky drops into the sturdiest armchair, hands up to show he’s mostly unarmed. “I’ll even go without a fight if you promise to send me somewhere with a proper winter outside my cell.”

Stark drops into the chair opposite him, scrubbing a grease-stained hand through his hair until it sticks up wildly. Bucky leaves his hands up as he tips back in his chair to stare at the ceiling, waiting for Stark to come to his decision. 

“I doubt you came here just to let me arrest you.”

“See, I know this stubborn kid who keeps jumping off buildings. Used to get away with it because he had this shield that meant he didn’t break every fool bone in his body and friends who didn’t let it get that far, but he seems to be lacking both these days.” He raises an eyebrow, pausing for dramatic effect. “If it were up to me, I’d rather he had the friends. Never much liked the good Captain quite as much as the kid in Brooklyn who always had to be dragged from a fight.”

Stark mumbles something that might be _sounds like him_. 

Bucky waits. He’s said his piece. The war taught him a sniper’s patience when he’s got a goal in his sights, no matter how little the Winter Soldier was used for that particular skill. 

“I want to poke at the arm. Vibranium or no vibranium, I can improve it.”

“Better you have it than the feds, after they toss me in prison.”

“I have an army of lawyers and a running bet with Rhodey on whether I can make enemies of more senators than he can befriend.” Stark shrugs, and if it’s a little tense and forced, neither of them point it out. “Tell… your friend that I have no desire to see these apartments gather more dust. Tell FRIDAY what you need so that you can move in, too.” 

“I won’t inflict myself on your hospitality.” He knows what he’s done. It haunts his nightmares only slightly less than the first class of Black Widows. 

“If you don’t stay, Cap won’t, and that negates the effort of getting you pardoned. Stay.” Stark stands, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “If you’ll excuse me, I have robots to chastise. The number of fire extinguishers I go through in a month is getting ridiculous.”

Bucky stares after Stark until the elevator doors close.

“Well,” FRIDAY says, “how about I pick out the furniture with Mr. Vision and you pretend you like it?”

“Ask _anyone_ but Vision,” he answers. He’s heard horror stories from Steve about the Vision’s taste in decoration. “Anyone.”

“Rude.”

 

***

 

“Shield.” 

The hail of sniper fire ceases, the heave of Bucky’s breath over their comms falling into silence. Steve squeezes his eyes shut for half a moment, letting one of the goons connect on a punch to punish himself for what he’s done.

“Soldat."

"Ready to comply."

**Author's Note:**

> Please be gentle.


End file.
